Background

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

A shiver runs through me when I think back to the
time when Tammy, my wife of five years, came to the conclusion that the gray
tabby who’d lived contentedly with us since we bought her on our honeymoon, was
lonely. Tammy convinced me that Sausalito, “Saucy” needed another feline to
keep her company. On Halloween of ’79 we decided to purchase a kitten.

We soon discovered it wasn’t the right
season for kittens. We were about to give up our search when we spotted a
Siamese kitten for sale in the classifieds. We called the number and were
invited over.

The breeder’s residence was a normal
looking house, at least I remember it that way. The silver-haired husband and
wife selling the kitten appeared normal as they ushered us into plush chairs in
the living room. As we made ourselves comfortable two stunning Siamese cats
pranced across the room in perfect unison, reminding me of the reason ancient
Egyptians worshiped felines. They settled on the hearth and glared at us as if
we were the ones about to be bartered away.

Are those the parents of the kitten we’re
here to see?” I asked.

“Yes,” answered the woman. “Do you know
much about Siamese cats?”

“No,” Tammy replied. “We have an adult cat
but she’s a plain gray tabby. We’re looking for a companion to keep her
company.”

The woman exchanged a furtive look with
her husband. He frowned at her until she said, “George, go and get the kitten
so these nice folks can get acquainted with her. I’ll pour everyone some iced
tea.”

After a few minutes our hosts returned,
she with the drinks and he with what looked like a squirming turd covered in
sooty fur. The turd opened its eyes and I could see that it was a cat. Missing were
the fathomless blue eyes so characteristic of Siamese cats; instead, there were
unusual flecks of orange that looked like glowing embers. Too bad I hadn’t
foreseen in those eyes the orange of a prison jumpsuit. Rather than an ermine
body with mink-colored accents, this kitten’s fur was dirty brown. It had
enormous ears like those of a bat.

We should have bolted for the door but
Tammy, to my surprise, started making cooing sounds. “It’s soooo cute,” she said, practically purring herself.

The two regal cats near the hearth looked
at me critically when I said, “This cat doesn’t look like its parents. It
doesn’t have white fur, or blue eyes.”

“It will lighten up as it reaches
adulthood,” the woman said hastily. “That’s when the eyes turn blue.”

“What about those ears? She can probably
pick up Radio Free Europe with those things.” I’d expected a smile. Was Radio
Free Europe still operating?

“She’ll grow into them,” the man said. I
noticed fresh scratches on his arms.

“How much is she?” Tammy asked.

The husband and wife glanced at each
other. “Fifty dollars,” they said in unison.

“May we have a moment to discuss this?” I
asked.

“Certainly.”

They placed the kitten between its parents
on the hearth, and left the room. The parent cats stared at their offspring for
a moment, rose and dashed from the room. The kitten made no effort to follow
them. I tried to pet it but the kitten shook as if trying to shed its skin. My
brain was crowded with all the red flags popping up.

Tammy was undeterred. “Isn’t it adorable!”
she exclaimed.

I didn’t think it was adorable; it had a
face only a mother could love, and from what I could see its mother didn’t love
it.

“And what a bargain. Only fifty dollars.
Let’s go for it.”

I could tell from the steely glint in my
wife’s eyes that nothing I could say or do would change her mind. When the
owners reappeared I handed over fifty bucks and we left with the kitten.

We named her Tas because she was like a
Tasmanian devil, always racing about in a whirl of agitated motion. I’d never
actually seen a Tasmanian devil, other than the cartoon, but the name seemed
appropriate because I’d never seen a cat like this before.

Saucy, whose supposed loneliness was the
reason we’d purchased Tas, stared at the new arrival like a surfer eying a fin
in the water. Saucy wanted nothing to do with her. As time passed, Tas did not grow into those ears but
her fur remained dark as a coal mine. Her eyes never changed to blue but continued
to glow like embers recently pulled from a furnace.

No matter how nice we were to her, Tas
would not purr. She refused to accommodate the rhythm of our household. She
clawed the furniture, jumped on us while we slept and seemed to smile while throwing
up food during the dinner hour. When she wasn’t a blur of motion she was laying
on top of our fridge with her head dangling over the edge, looking at the world
upside down. This was where she was situated one Saturday when I decided to
make myself a sandwich. Not wanting to bonk her head when I opened the fridge
door, I nudged her out of the way. Tas bit me. Not a nip but a bite, her fangs
sinking deeply into my flesh.

I yelped and exploded with a barrage of obscenities. A kitchen cleaver was nearby on the counter and I considered
sinking it into the cat’s skinny neck, but at that moment Tammy, who’d been
gardening in the backyard, burst into the kitchen to see what the fuss was
about. She failed to close the door leading to the backyard. Tas leapt off the
fridge, sailing through the air like she’d been born to it and landed on the
floor. She dashed out to the backyard and vanished in a flash.

Not likely, I thought as I finished
rinsing my hand in cold water and wrapped a paper towel around it. Blood
bloomed through the paper. “She’ll come back on her own,” I said,
half-heartedly, glad to see her go.

Tammy dashed up and down the street but
finally returned, alone. She sank onto a kitchen chair and began to cry. I
patted her shoulder. “It’s for the best,” I said. “Tas wasn’t happy with us.”

Our house returned to the tranquility we’d
enjoyed before bringing Tas home that Halloween. Months later it was hard to
remember we’d ever lived with such a disruption. But an incident brought Tas
vividly to mind one hot July evening shortly after her departure. I’d cracked
open a window in our bedroom to let a slight breeze into the stifling room and
something flew in the window. I didn’t recognize it at first, but Tammy rose up
on the mattress, pulled a pillow close to her face for protection and began
screaming, “Bat! It’s a bat!”

I grabbed the golf putter she’d given me
for my birthday and tried to clobber the bat but it proved as illusive as a
hole in one. I finally made contact and the bat fell onto the bed, where it lay
without moving.

“Get it out of here,” Tammy shrieked. “Get
that filthy thing out of my bedroom.”

Thinking it dead—and with no thought for
the diseases they undoubtedly carry—I grabbed the bat by a wing and tried to
fling it out the window. Instead of being dead it sank its rat-like teeth into
my hand, the same spot where Tas had bitten me months earlier. I reached for
the alarm clock on a nearby nightstand and beat the bat until its head crushed
and it released its bite on me. Taking no chances, I wrapped the broken animal
in an old t-shirt and carried it down to the garbage can beside our house. The
sanitation truck emptied the can later that morning, just as the sun came up.

My sleep was disturbed the next few
evenings by the rustling of wings. But when I explored with a flashlight I
could find nothing. Tammy once woke to find me sitting on the edge of the bed, staring
at her. Moonlight poured in through the window painting her with a pearl-like
glow. She was more beautiful than ever and a sensation swelled in me that I’d
never felt before. I wanted her desperately, more than I’d wanted her that
first night on our honeymoon five years ago. But this was different. This
passion originated in a different place. I had a nearly uncontrollable urge to
sink my teeth into her neck, but I resisted.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Haunted houses and Halloween go
together like dots on dice, but the haunted house on our street never did anything to attract
trick-or-treaters. So why was there a light burning on Verna’s porch?

My feet began pulling me to the light. My
head swirled with thoughts of murder: rat poison, asphyxiation, throat
slashing, but I was more interested in candy than my safety.

I inched up the front steps to her porch
and peered into Verna’s kitchen window. She was seated at her kitchen table,
her head resting in her hands. Her back was to me and I couldn’t see her face, but I could
hear her crying, a raspy soul rending sound, not the depraved rant of the
undead or the wailing tirade of a guilt-riddled wife who’d murdered her
husband.

Instead of ringing her doorbell, I turned
to go. As I did so I saw something on her table that made me squeak like a
mouse finding a wheel of cheese—treasure. Edible treasure.

On Verna’s kitchen table was a large
pirate chest made of cardboard. Among the pirate images painted on it was one
of the most cherished names in a chubby kid’s lexicon—Hershey. Inside the chest
were countless bars of chocolate. Not the penny-size ones—these big boys
fetched upwards of a quarter each. I felt like Edmond Dantes in The Count of
Monte Cristo as I eyed such treasure.

Verna must have heard my squeak. She
turned around and looked at me standing there on the other side of her kitchen
window. I’d never seen her up
close and I noticed she was totally opaque without a ghost’s translucence. Her
eyes, while red, didn’t look otherworldly. She swiped away tears with the back
of her hand and waved me in, saying, “The door isn’t locked.”

The door opened with a moan, as if it
wasn’t accustomed to swinging open. My costume didn’t make entering any
easier. Verna’s house had the same floor plan as ours which meant I was
practically inside her kitchen when I stepped through the threshold. She stood
up and gave me a watery smile. She looked…rather pleasant, even with puffy
eyes. But then Hansel and Gretel would never have entered the witch’s house had
she not also appeared pleasant.

“That is a very nice costume. Did it take
you long to make?”

I nodded.

She turned to the chocolate chest. “I
ordered this from a catalog a few months ago.”

“It’s a lot of candy.”

“I was planning on handing it out to trick
or treaters this evening.”

“But you never give out candy on Halloween,” I said.

“True. True. But this year I decided to
make up for all the years I sat in this dark house without handing out treats.
Unfortunately, I had to work late tonight and by the time I got home all of the
children had already passed through the neighborhood. All the children, except
you. You’re Stephen, from across the street, aren’t you?”

The costume didn’t disguise me as much as
I’d thought. I nodded.

“Would you like some candy?”

Another nod.

She reached into the chest for a
foil-wrapped chocolate bar, dropped it into my pillowcase.

I thanked her and headed for the door, but
her sniffling stopped me. “You should come to neighborhood barbeques and block
parties next summer. And my birthday party is in two weeks. Why doncha come?”

“After all this time, I don’t think people
would want me to come,” she answered.

“I
want you to come.”

She looked kinda pretty as she smiled at
me and closed her door. I headed home, where my mother waited with her sweet
tooth.

The next day I awoke to find a Hershey’s
treasure chest on our front porch. An attached note said:

For
Stephen, my only Kilarney Park friend.

Don’t
get a stomach ache.

That afternoon something sprouted on our
street that we hadn’t seen before. The bright red paint seemed out of
place in front of the gray house that had once haunted my feverish imagination. Hammered into
Verna’s front yard—a FOR SALE sign.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

In keeping with the season I’m
reposting a true Halloween story from my memoir The Kid in the Kaleidoscope. I hope you enjoy it:

Haunted houses belong in the realm of
goose bumps, foggy nights and old neighborhoods, not pristine suburbs with
freshly asphalted streets, unblemished sidewalks and immature trees. But a
ghost lingered across the street, in a house where a man died.

I was only two when our neighborhood
suffered its first fatality. Kilarney Park (later to be swallowed up by the
Silicon Valley) had just opened for occupancy and neighbors had yet to come
together with barbeques and meet-and-greets. It didn’t help that none of the
parents on our street seemed to know the dead man’s name, much less how he
died. By the time I was eleven no one could even remember what he’d looked
like. For years he was referred to as The Ghost of Kilarney Park.

Once after an excessive dose of cough
medicine, I peered out of our front window and saw the ghost sitting on a
nearby light pole. The next day I got the best grade I’d ever received on an
arithmetic test, a C+. I figured the ghost was good luck and I spread the word.
Soon kids in the neighborhood were attributing good luck to the ghost, as well
as bad.

The deceased had been married to Verna,
who continued to live in her neat little house at Kilarney Park until I was
eleven. She wasn’t old enough to look grandmotherly, but she appeared older
than the adults on our street. If she had any friends or family they were never
seen visiting her.

Verna’s house was a colorless shade of
gray. Her car was gray and she went to work on weekdays wearing gray suits that
matched her gray hair. She planted no flowers. Weeds such as dandelions might
have added a hint of color but they refused to take root in her soil. The
developer of Kilarney Park had planted sycamore trees in the front yards but
Verna’s died. In its place was an Italian cypress shaped like a giant candle
stick. It was such a dark shade of green that it appeared black. My mother
complained that the sight of it depressed her.

“Why?” I asked.

“Italian cypresses are associated with
cemeteries.”

“Why?”

“Because the roots don’t fan out. They
grow straight down and don’t disturb the dead,” she said.

On weekday mornings Verna could be seen driving to work. She was the only woman in our neighborhood who worked outside
the home until my mother landed a job when I was fourteen.

Verna was grist for our rumor mill; our
fertile imaginations ran rampant: The reason The Ghost of Kilarney Park hadn’t
moved on was because his wife had murdered him and his soul cried out for
revenge. She done it with poison—rat poison, maybe. Or maybe she slit his
throat with a carving knife while he was snoring. My best friend Ricky Delgado
didn’t buy that one; he said the police would have hauled her away if her old
man was found among blood-soaked sheets with a gaping hole in his throat.
Another theory was that she asphyxiated him with car fumes in the garage. There
was little by way of malice that we kids in the neighborhood wouldn’t attribute
to the poor widow.

Randy Bernardino who lived three doors
down from us was a feverish Twilight Zone
fan; he floated the idea that Verna was as dead as her husband—a ghost, one who
might not even know she was dead. This notion of Verna being a troubled specter
caught between two worlds began to lose plausibility when her battery died and
Dad rescued her with jumper cables. It seemed improbable that a ghost needed a
car to get around in.

The years rolled past and Verna continued
to live in a universe parallel to ours, keeping her own company while never
interacting with anyone. She drove by our lemonade stands, lawn parties and
garage sales until she faded from our sight. But after several years of
invisibility, an episode happened that brought her vividly into view.

Halloween—1963.

Except for Christmas, Halloween was my
favorite holiday. My mother always checked my booty when I returned, claiming
she was looking for tampered candy or hidden razor blades. She always used this
as a pretext for confiscating some of the best candy. Ricky Delgado and I
always worked on our Halloween costumes together. One year he’d be a pirate and
I’d be a cowboy. Or he’d be a spaceman and I’d be a vampire.

Several days before Halloween in 1963 we
both decided to be robots. Since neither one of us was willing to consider a
different costume, we played a game of rock-paper-scissors to see who got to be
a robot. My paper covered Ricky’s rock, but my best friend could be a dickwad and
wouldn’t lose gracefully. So we both built robot costumes.

Boxes were glued together, a small one for
the head and a large one for the body. Openings were cut from the inside
so our heads could slide into the smaller box like the headpiece of a space suit. Wire
coat hangers were straightened and attached as antennae. The larger box was
supposed to rest on our shoulders to prevent the weight from pressing down on
our heads, but the costume still managed to give me a tremendous headache.

When it came to finishing touches, Ricky
struggled to keep up with me. I never received a grade less than an “A” on art
assignments. In the fifth grade I was King of the Bulletin Boards. (The extra
credit helped get me a “C” in arithmetic classes.) I cut neat openings for the
eyes with an X-Acto knife and appropriated a broken shower nozzle for the
mouth. After spray painting the boxes silver, I painted rivets and welded seams.
My pièce de résistance—a laser blast to
the body where a space creature had zapped me. A few more details here and
there, legs and Keds wrapped in aluminum foil and presto—Man of Metal.

That year Halloween fell on Thursday. I
faced an arithmetic test the next day and wasn’t prepared for it. (I’d spent
too much time working on my costume.) My mother refused to let me go
trick-or-treating with Ricky until I’d finished all my homework and assured her
that I was ready for the test. Hearing my mother hand out candy to trick or
treaters on our front porch only darkened my mood.

Ricky was long gone by the time I covered
my legs in aluminum foil, slipped into my costume and grabbed a pillowcase for
the candy.

costume. “And don’t eat anything
until you bring it home so I can check for razor blades.”

A wane moon floated overhead as I began
knocking on doors. Many houses had already handed out their candy and turned off
their porch lights. I received an unexpected reception by those still handing
out goodies. I’d worked hard to make my costume memorable, but I hadn’t
realized just how similar mine was to Ricky’s. Everywhere I went I was mistaken
for him. And he had over an hour head start. The candy distributor at every
house I approached said nearly the same thing as they closed their door in my
face, “Nice try—you’ve already been here.”

As fast as possible for a chubby kid
dressed in boxes, I huffed and puffed to a section of neighborhood where I
didn’t normally go. Still, every doorbell I rang had already been rung by
Ricky. Before long my Zorro wristwatch was telling me it was time to head home:
I was the only kid still walking the pavement and most porch lights were off. My empty pillowcase hung limp
in my hand as I headed home.

The lights of our house were likewise off
when I turned a corner and headed home. I had a splitting headache
from the heavy costume pressing down on my head and a back itch I couldn’t
possibly scratch. Then I saw a light. In the strangest of places.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Everyone I might have offended with
this post is dead, except my mother who doesn’t have a computer, and there’s
something I’d like to get off my chest. I’ve always been suspicious of the
manner in which my uncle died.

This happened when I was two years old so
I’ve had to piece together a picture of the event from various relatives,
mostly my mother who was not actually there when the tragedy took place.

My mother’s boisterous Portuguese family
had gathered at Anderson Reservoir, a recently opened man-made lake along
Coyote Creek in California’s Santa Clara County. As the story goes, five or six family members, including my
Uncle Laddie, left the picnic area and rented a motorboat. They sped off across the lake, but when
they returned a few hours later Uncle Laddie wasn’t among them.

Evidently, he fell out of the boat and
drowned. His body, tangled in the flooded vegetation cluttering the bottom of
the newly created lake, wasn’t recovered until a full year later. By that time
an autopsy was unable to ascertain the cause of death, which the police deemed
an accidental death by drowning.

I’ve always struggled to believe what I
was told about this. I admit to having an overactive imagination, but I doubt
what I was told. Why? You be the judge.

Seven men rented a boat for a spin on the
lake. Oddly, no women accompanied them. A coincidence? I understand this was a
small boat, a tight fit for seven men. Alcohol was no doubt involved, prompting
the driver to throttle the boat into high gear. According to another uncle, now
deceased but present on the boat, Uncle Laddie simply vanished; one moment he
was there, gone the next. They’d been traveling at high speed and it took a
while for the boat to slow down—the precise spot of his disappearance unknown—but
several of the men reportedly dove into the water to look for Laddie. Witnesses
said Laddie was not seen struggling in the water, apparently having never
surfaced after falling into the lake. Heart attack? It’s possible, but Laddie
was young, in good shape and without a family history of heart illness.

Perhaps I’ve watched too many CSI-type
programs but here’s what troubles me. How do six men, sitting knee to knee in a
cramped boat, not notice someone
vanishing overboard? No one heard a splash? No one saw a man in distress? No
one noticed anything odd until suddenly the boat was less crowded?

As a writer, it’s easy for me to envision
a conspiracy to eliminate Uncle Laddie, one that would necessarily include
everyone on that boat, including two of Uncle Laddie’s brothers, but I have no
evidence of a conspiracy. No motive. Still, The Godfather comes to mind, that scene of murder on the water
where Michael Corleone orders the death of older brother Fredo.

I have no reason to believe Uncle Laddie’s
friends and relatives were implicated in his death or that they were anything
other than grief-struck by this incident. Laddie was quite popular from what
I’ve heard. A carpenter and handyman, Uncle Laddie was generous with his time,
always available with a smile and helping hand. He build a screen door for our
kitchen and helped my dad pour the cement walkway beside our house.

Uncle Laddie’s disappearance happened on a
warm summer day nearly sixty years ago. No one aboard that boat is still alive.
I wish I had more memories of him, but I was just a toddler at the time of my
uncle’s death, too small to remember him clearly. But I do recall a smiling man
in a bright Hawaiian shirt, holding out a cookie jar to me. And I remember
Uncle Laddie’s dress army uniform, left behind in a closet when my aunt sold
the home she’d shared with my uncle and stored her furniture in our spare
bedroom, later my bedroom. I would take out that uniform and fill it with my
imagination, running my fingers over the brass buttons and concocting fantasies
about an uncle who’d single-handedly defeated Hitler.

I’m glad to finally get these
concerns off my chest, but I wish I could close my eyes without picturing all
those men on that boat and wondering what actually happened.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

We say it to kids all the time, but
it isn’t true: cheaters very often do prosper. Case point, Venice in 1564. Back
then, rich dudes would donate money to build social clubs dedicated to popular
saints, which in Venice meant a saint whose body had been stolen and brought to
Venice. (Check out my post Conspiracy, Theft and Sin for the outrageous manner
in which St. Mark’s body was smuggled into Venice.) These clubs were places
where rich folks could pretend to be pious while patting themselves on the back
for arranging to have been born into rich families.

The Scuolo Grande di San Rocco (The
Confraternity of Saint Roch) was one of these clubs. In 1564 artwork was needed
to cover the interior of a massive newly completed clubhouse gaudy enough to
please Donald Trump. Venice overflowed with great artists, so the board of
directors did what many organizations do when they want free ideas before
settling on what they really want—they held a contest.

Painters in good standing with Venice’s
Art Guild were invited to submit a single sketch for a painting to fill the
massive oval opening in the ceiling just inside the Scuolo’s new entrance. The
theme of the sketch: the Glorification of St. Roch. (Yes, the body of St. Roch
was brought to Venice under suspicious circumstances.) A young painter named
Jacopo Robusti (better known by his nickname Tintoretto) wanted this commission
badly. To win it, he did something no other competitor had the nerve to do. He
cheated.

A day had been set aside for artists to
come to the Scuolo to present their sketches and have them judged. The artist
with the winning sketch would be awarded the job of creating the final ceiling painting.
Competition for this project was heavy and many great sketches were presented.
Tintoretto was last to show his work. But he didn’t present a sketch. He pulled
a cord rigged to the side of the entryway and a tarp slid to the ground,
revealing his Glorification of St. Roch, a completed oil painting. Tintoretto
and a few of his drunken buddies had snuck into the Scuolo the night before and
installed the finished painting in the ceiling.

The other artists cried foul since only a
sketch had been asked for.

Tintoretto claimed this was the way he
sketched—fast and furious with a paint brush—although he finally admitted to
cheating. But he’d done his homework well, studying the Scuolo’s bylaws and
discovering that no gift to the Scuolo could be rejected. History didn’t record
his exact words, but Tintoretto must have said something like this to his angry
fellow artists and the board of directors: “You are all correct; I have cheated
and don’t deserve to win this contest. As my punishment, I give the Scuolo my
painting. Pay me nothing.”

The board of directors must have rubbed
their chins and thought this quite a deal. Instead of awarding an expensive
commission they were receiving a magnificent painting for free. And didn’t it
look great already installed in the ceiling? To the irritation of the other
contestants, the board of directors happily accepted Tintoretto’s painting. To
this day it can be viewed where Tintoretto and his drunken buddies hung it in
1564.

Tintoretto may have not played by the
rules, but for the next twenty years he painted scores of masterpieces to cover
the walls and ceilings of this massive building. The Scuolo never considered
hiring another artist because it was felt that all paintings needed to match
the Tintoretto in the entryway. And who could match Tintoretto’s style better
than Tintoretto himself. The artist had played his cards well.

One of the Scuolo's many rooms decorated by Tintoretto.

If you believe cheaters should never
prosper and your sense of fairness outweighs your interest in great art, the
next time you’re in Venice I suggest avoiding The Scuolo Grande di San Rocco. In addition to
being a repository of some of the finest examples of Renaissance painting in
Italy, it’s also a monument to cheating.

Monday, October 22, 2012

“Haven’t I told you to stop doing
that?” my wife growled while scowling at me from a barstool on the far side of
the kitchen counter.

“Yes, you’ve told me to stop doing it.”

“How long would you say I’ve been asking
you not to do it?”

I gave it some thought. “About forty
years.”

Her lips tightened into a line. “You
really are a slow learner.”

Mrs. Chatterbox and I are usually
sympatico—Tweedledee and Tweedledum joined together at the hip—but on this
we’re worlds apart, hostiles on opposite sides of the Neutral Zone. My blood
sugar was dropping and I wasn’t in the mood for battle. I chose my words
carefully. “I’d think that after forty years you’d catch on that no matter how
much you nag me I’m going to sniff the milk in the fridge before I pour it on
my cereal.”

“It disgusts me to see you sniffing the
milk carton.”

I considered listing a few things she does
that disgust me, but decided it best to
keep those worms in the can.
Besides, that was a battle I couldn’t hope to win—I have quite a few disgusting
habits. “I don’t want to pour sour milk on my cereal and have to pour it all
down the garbage disposal. I hate the taste of sour milk.”

She sighed the sigh only the wife of a
truly stubborn man can sigh. “Just check the expiration date.”

This was the battle cry that had launched
our Forty Year War; it had little to do with me sniffing the milk carton and
everything to do with her desire to convert me to her philosophy of expiration
dates. She rose from the barstool and walked over to the fridge, where I’d
returned the sniffed milk after deeming it worthy of my cereal. She checked the
date on the carton. “This expired yesterday,” she said smugly. “That’s why I
bought a fresh carton yesterday at the store.”

“If you didn’t want me sniffing the milk,
you could have thrown it out yesterday when you brought home the new.”

She spoke slowly, as if explaining God to
a toddler. “Yesterday, Sweetie, the date hadn’t yet expired.”

I hadn’t seen the new carton because, like
most guys, I suffer from refrigerator blindness; only humans with uteri can
find things in the fridge. It’s a scientific fact that uteri function like
tracking devices, making it easier for women to find things. Not that I would
have chosen the new carton had I been able to locate it lurking behind the
pulpless orange juice. I would have chosen the old one because I don’t believe
in expiration dates. Why throw out perfectly good milk just because of a number
stamped on the carton? I sniffed the milk and it was fine. A cow gave its all
for this milk and I wasn’t going to pour it down the drain until it plopped out
of the carton in congealed,
semi-solid form.

For years we’d gone round and round on
this business of expiration dates. I’m of the opinion that the date alerts
supermarket personnel that the product shouldn’t be sold after this date; Mrs. Chatterbox believes it
shouldn’t be consumed after this
date.

Several times I’ve asked store employees
to weigh in on this. They should know, right? They always side with me. But this isn’t good enough for Mrs. C., who I
suspect has climbed out of bed to toss out groceries whose dates expired at
midnight. It’s a good thing there isn’t an expiration date on our wedding
license or I could now be reeking of

curdled milk while living in a
Dumpster.

So how does it work in your family: does
the product expiration date mean the store should no longer be selling the
item, or does it mean it’s no longer safe to consume it?

Note: today is Mrs. C’s birthday
and it’s a momentous one. I expect most of you to side with her on the above question, so this will be my first
birthday gift of the day to her.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

After finding this picture in my
file of travel shots I scratched my head trying to remember what was so
interesting as to prompt this photograph. It took me a while, and then I
remembered; this was a shot looking down from the balcony of our ship as we
passed into one of the locks at the Panama Canal.

The black line at the bottom is the space
between our ship and the concrete wall of the lock. Here it was about five
inches, but it got even tighter. The second picture shows another ship entering
before us, another tight fit. After passing through the canal we docked in
Costa Rica and a crew came out to paint away the massive black skidmarks left
on our ship from rubbing against the lock. No wonder the Panamanians have
decided to widen the Canal. Still, it’s been an engineering marvel for over a
hundred years.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Last night while watching TV a
commercial appeared that went something like this. (Note: imagine this being
voiced over by a minor celebrity from the Seventies whose career stalled after
several DUIs.)

“Is your life so empty that you don’t
care your kids are now covered in tattoos heralding a Zombie Apocalypse, or
that your spouse has a house account at the Embassy Suites and a credit card
receipt for a strip pole in his hotel room? Or that you’ve broken the tail-wagging mechanism on the
formerly exuberant golden retriever that now whimpers and drags his butt across
the carpet when you walk into the room?”

The
TV screen showed a dreary montage of average looking folks with long faces and
tragic expressions— the look of French aristocrats being marched to the
guillotine. The colors were washed out—the cheerful colors of Mordor.

“If this sounds familiar you might be
depressed. But you don’t have to live with depression. Ask your doctor about
Happiva!”

The
screen suddenly exploded with color, as if Ludwig Von Drake from Disney’s
Wonderful World of Color had liquefied a rainbow in a blender and
flung the contents at the screen.

“Happiva! One pill a day will set you back
on a path to happiness and fulfillment, convince you that life is again worth
living, cage the negativity monkey that has been flinging poo at you.”

The
morose, colorless folks at the beginning of the commercial became giddy as
munchkins, smiling and dancing like a house had fallen on a wicked witch. These
transformed users of Happiva, never filmed actually taking the drug, were now
shown taking childish delight in simple things, holding a grandchild’s hand in
a park, walking on the beach with a frolicking pooch, looking into the eyes of
a loved one with that come hither look—wait, that’s the boner commercial with
the separate bathtubs. Anyway, you get the picture. The drug manufacturers
pushing Happiva were promising a miracle in a pill. This is where I sat up and
took notice—the side effects.

The narrator started talking faster and
hundreds of words in miniscule print appeared at the bottom of the screen. I
listened closely.

“Before using Happiva be sure you’re
not pregnant and are able to tolerate a three month detox program to wean you
off Happiva. In certain instances test groups have displayed tendencies toward:

#1. Diarrhea. —Nothing
my own cooking hasn’t caused.

#2. Painful
urination. —Managed this in college after a batch of funny brownies.

#3. Constipation.
—When God gives you cement, make bricks.

#4. Nausea. —Maybe
I’ll lose a few pounds.

#5. Excessive
Flatulence. —I’ll hang out in my basement and write the next great

American novel “Fifty Scents
of Grey.”

#6. Weight Gain. —So much for losing a few pounds.

#7.
Emotional Distress Leading to Instances of Rage.— I’ll work this out
on the

highway.

#8. An
Oily Rectal Discharge You Can’t Control. —Are you sh**ting me?

#9. Loss
of Interest in Sex. —I thought the last one was bad.

#10. Sexual Performance Issues. For men, the inability to
maintain an erection; for

women, sexual urges when
confined to solemn places like church and PTA

#13. Reduced Tolerance to Alcohol. —How will I muster
courage to entertain friends

with fabulous impressions?

#14. Physical Dependency. —What’s in this crap? Crack?

#15. Memory Loss. —Will I remember that I’m now worthless
in the sack?

#16. Joint Pain. —Your fingers will be too sore to roll
one.

#17. Increased Body Odor. —I doubt anyone will notice the
difference.

#18. Hair Loss. —Hopefully this refers to hair on my
back.

#19. Reduced Ability to Tell Right from Wrong. —Finally,
a true benefit and plausible

legal defense.

#20. Feelings of Suicide. —What the F**K!!!!!!!

Okay, I admit to some exaggeration. I’ve borrowed some of these side effects from products other than Happiva but
currently on the market. But I swear #20 is true. I mean, what’s the point of
taking medication to address your depression if it makes you want to eat a
bullet sandwich? Or commit a crime…while having an uncontrollable oily rectal
discharge?

It
troubles me to admit that writing this post has depressed the hell out of me. I
think I’ll take a few pills, steal a car and drive to a park to yell at some
kids. When the cops show up I’ll blame it on the Happiva.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

PT Dilloway was one of the
first people I connected with when I began Chubby Chatterbox. Aside from the
fact that PT is an exceptional blogger with a razor sharp wit, he’s also an
accomplished author celebrating the release of his new novel, A Hero’s
Journey. Fans have been looking
forward to this book for a long time and I’m honored to have him as a guest blogger:

Becoming
a Hero

Thanks for letting me
take over your blog today, Mr. Chatterbox! I can’t hope to match the
eloquent narration of the Chubby Chatterbox, especially not when it comes to
real life—or a close facsimile thereof. But I figure I do have a
character who likes to tell convoluted stories from his real life.

So let me introduce Mr.
Percival Graves, from my novel A Hero’s Journey. In this scene, Percival tells his young
protégé Dr. Emma Earl how long ago he became a superhero known as the Scarlet
Knight in order to give her a glimpse of what she’s in for as the latest
incarnation of the hero.

I was born in London, long
before even your parents were born. I came here after the war. I
had heard in a pub that America was the place to be. America would be the
center for the new age now that they had the Bomb and had come out of it with
hardly a scratch, not up to their necks in blood like us in Europe. The
man was drunk off his arse, but he seemed on to something. So with what
money I had left from my service days I got on a boat to this country.

I didn’t get far once I
landed here. About the only work for someone like me—someone with more
muscles than brains—was to work on the docks as a mule. I worked there
ten hours a day for next to nothing. Shared a tiny flat with five other
blokes.

Then one day this government
wanker shows up. Not a military man from the look of him. Probably
in the CIA, or OSS like it was back then. He said there was a crate on
board we were absolutely, positively not to touch. Some of his own people
were going to handle that one. Of course all sorts of theories went
around about what it might be: Nazi gold, a secret weapon, or even
Hitler’s body.

You’re a smart girl, so you
might have figured it out already. I didn’t until that night while I
slept. One of my old army mates, Reginald, came to me in a dream.
He said, “You haven’t made anything of yourself, you wanker.”

“What do you want me to do,
Reg? I’m just a mule.”

“You got the brains of one,
that’s for sure,” he said. Then he softened a bit and said, “But you got
the heart of a lion. I saw it over there. Like when you carried me
all the way to the field hospital when that sniper hit me.”

“Not much need for that sort
of thing over here, is there?”

“If I weren’t a ghost I’d
give you a good kick in the knickers for that one.” He gave me that hard
look like when he would order us to take a machine gun nest. “That
government crate has something very important on it. You need to get your
arse in there and open it up.”

“But I could go to jail for
that.”

“Only if you get caught, you
damned fool.”

“What’s in there?”

“Something that will allow
you to be somebody.”

“What are you getting on
about, Reg?”

“Trust me, lad. There’s
a reason you didn’t die in the war when by all rights you should have.
You have a destiny. It’s in that crate.”

I still didn’t believe him,
but I decided to go anyway and see what it was all about. If the
government blokes showed up, I’d just tell them I got mixed up. They were
only on the outside of the ship, though, to watch the perimeter. I waited
until one of them took a smoke break and then I went inside.

You already know what came
next. I got the crate open and inside was that big red box, just like the
one you found. I opened it up and saw the armor inside. Then this
damned ghost showed up, and started to give me his spiel about the honor and
tradition of the Order of the Scarlet Knight and how imperative it was I save
the world from evil and so forth.

Of course about the only
reading I’d ever done was the comic books. I was dumb enough to think I’d
be just like one of those costumed adventurers. Thought I’d go around
punching out criminals and kissing damsels in distress. I thought it
would be fun.

The first time I ran into the
Dragoon, it stopped being fun. His armor arrived from overseas too.
Some air force colonel found it and decided he would make himself an atomic
bomb. Then he’d bring the rest of the world to its knees.

First time I saw him, he was
at Rampart State, to steal the notes from a scientist there who had worked on
the Manhattan Project. He killed the poor bloke and made off with the
notes before I could stop him. I finally caught up to him at an airbase
where he planned to steal himself a casing for his bomb. We got into a
tussle with me finally coming out on top.

I thought I’d won. I
felt so generous I gave him the chance to surrender. Instead, he pulled
out a detonator he’d hidden on himself. He’d rigged the munitions bunker
to explode in order to cover his escape. The explosion might have killed
both of us if not for the armor. It saved my life that day. Of
course the air force people around there didn’t have no armor. About
thirty of them died.

The Dragoon tried to
escape. I caught up with him again and this time there was no nonsense
about it. I ran the Sword of Justice right through his foul heart.
Just to be sure I cut his head off too.

I hid the black armor away,
and hoped I’d seen the last of it. Then I got down to work. Found me a job at the Plaine
Museum, pushing a broom around. The pay wasn’t great, but it was enough
that I could get my own place so no one would bug me.

It wasn’t at all like in the
comics. It was a nasty business for the most part. Night after
night of going out there, busting the chops of purse-snatchers, bank robbers,
murderers, and rapists. The mob back then was even worse than it is these
days; the harbor was practically backed up from the number of bodies floating
in it.

Here’s what you need to
understand, lass: no matter how many of them I put away, there

were always more of
them. You think people would learn, but for some men—and women—that’s all
they know. They come from the bad neighborhoods or maybe they’re just
twisted inside. All they know is taking, like a bunch of wild dogs
fighting over a bone. You can kick a few of them to the pound, but
there’s always going to be more.

If you like this
excerpt, you can buy A Hero’s Journey from Solstice Publishing
here. It’s also available from Amazon, B&N, and other retailers.To learn more about my novel, including
character bios, deleted scenes, and a visitor’s guide to Rampart City, visit my
blog at http://www.ptdilloway.com

Thanks again for
hosting me, Stephen!

Note: PT is giving away a free PDF copy of his new novel
to one lucky Chubby Chatterbox commenter, so let him know you want it by
leaving a comment.